Gay Rights Gained in U.S. Amid Russian, Ugandan Reversals

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- At a time of growing public
acceptance of gay rights in the U.S., flash points of resistance
in Russia and Africa point to the endurance of discrimination
over sexual orientation as a political tool.

From Moscow to Kampala, punitive new laws against
homosexuality have been enacted, solidifying support for the
leaders in some quarters, including churches, while drawing
criticism from elsewhere in the world.

President Barack Obama, who backed same-sex marriage rights
in his re-election campaign, has chastised Uganda for passing
laws calling for prison sentences for homosexual acts. And the
U.S. sent a delegation featuring famous gay athletes to the 2014
Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has
signed laws banning the adoption of Russian-born children by
foreign gay couples and blocking distribution of information on
“non-traditional sexual relations” to minors.

“Since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Russia has been
searching for its special mission,” said Richard Mole, a senior
lecturer in East European studies at University College London.
“Establishing itself as the defender of traditional values
against Western decadence can be seen as a way for Russia to
fulfill its historical destiny.”

While the world was once more aligned against
homosexuality, the spectrum of opinion today puts pressure on
politicians who champion laws opposing it, said Michael Klarman,
a Harvard Law School professor and author of “From the Closet
to the Altar,” a legal history of same-sex marriage.

Russians Resist

The same forces that led to progress on the issue in
Western Europe and the U.S. “will also be at work in the rest
of the world,” Klarman said.

“It’s just that the rest of the world started in a
different position,” he said, adding that Russia eventually
will see support for gays become an international human rights
issue. “They see that change is being pushed around the world,
and it’s going to come for them, and so they’re resisting it.”

More than 80 percent of Russians are opposed to same-sex
marriage, according to polls conducted by the Levada Center last
year. And 47 percent said gays and lesbians shouldn’t have the
same rights as other citizens, while 39 percent said they
should. By contrast, a majority of Americans now accept gay
marriage, surveys show, with 17 states and the nation’s capital
legalizing those unions.

‘Notorious Law’

“The notorious law against homosexual propaganda among
minors passed by the Russian parliament helped to spur the
problem of gay marriage in particular and the problem of
homophobia in general,” said Tatyana Vorozheikina, an analyst
at the Levada Center. “The law was homophobic in general and it
sharply increased the homophobic mood in Russia.”

While conditions for gay people are improving in the U.S.
and other nations, they’re worsening elsewhere, said Evan
Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, a New York-based group
leading a campaign to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

“Gay people are often the canary in the coal mine,”
Wolfson said. “The way a country treats gay people, like the
way it treats women, is often an indication of even deeper flaws
and abuses with regard to bedrock principles of pluralism, the
rule of law and democracy.”

Attempts at toughening laws against homosexuality in some
countries, particularly those lacking democratic traditions,
speak to the political needs of leaders more than any common
global theme, according to John Green, director of the Ray C.
Bliss Institute at the University of Akron in Ohio, who has led
studies of religion in politics.

Loose Parallels

“I’d be very cautious about drawing too close a parallel,
because each of the circumstances are different and each of the
leaders have different motivations,” Green said. “It’s
important to remember that Russia and Uganda are not as
thoroughly democratized.”

In the U.S., the Pew Research Center has found that support
for same-sex marriage rose above a majority for the first time
last year, with 51 percent supporting the right of gays and
lesbians to marry and 42 percent opposing it.

Acceptance has accelerated most dramatically among the
young, Pew found, with those younger than 30 supporting gay
marriage by about two-to-one, and those 50 and older divided.
Almost three-quarters of Americans surveyed -- 72 percent --
said legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable.”
This included 59 percent of opponents.

Tide Turning

With states from California to Maine legalizing same-sex
marriage, Freedom to Marry says more than 38 percent of the U.S.
population lives in a state that either permits same-sex
marriage or honors out-of-state marriages.

The tide of public opinion turning toward acceptance of
homosexuality is driven in part by businesses that can’t afford
discrimination, said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a lawyer who
represented 100 companies in a U.S. Supreme Court brief opposing
a California ban on same-sex marriage last year. These include
Apple Inc., General Electric Co. and Google Inc.

“A lot of opinion leaders are realizing that this is a
moment in time where they have to decide whether they want to be
on the right side of history, because they know how history will
judge this debate,” Rosenkranz said.

“You see Republicans now wrestling with which side of the
line they’re going to be on politically,” Rosenkranz said. That
would never have happened “10 or I think even five years ago,
unless you had a daughter who was a lesbian.”

Companies Engaged

After years of not taking a stand on social issues,
hundreds of large corporations signed a brief for the Supreme
Court last year in favor of overturning a key part of the 1996
federal Defense of Marriage Act. In Indiana, Eli Lilly & Co. and
Cummins Inc. each donated $100,000 to a campaign opposed to a
proposed amendment banning gay unions.

After the high court overturned the part of the law
blocking federal recognition of same-sex marriages, Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg presided over the marriage of two men in
Washington in September.

Still, there is nothing inevitable in the debate about
homosexuality. Most major religions see marriage as between a
man and a woman, despite how the mainstream media portray the
issue, said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization
for Marriage in Washington.

“These questions don’t change the fundamental truth of
traditional sexual morality that men and women are made for each
other, that there’s something unique about that,” Brown said.
“For Catholics and Christians and Muslims and others,
homosexual acts are sinful.”

Divisive Issue

Green, of the University of Akron, says the 51 percent
approval of gay marriage isn’t simply growing acceptance, it’s
also a measure of how divisive the issue remains.

“While public opinion is changing, it’s not changing
everywhere at the same rate,” he said. “This is causing the
issue of homosexuality generally, but also the issue of same-sex
marriage, to be more divisive.”

In Russia, Putin has adopted a more conservative ideology
since returning to the presidency in 2012, maintaining close
ties with the Russian Orthodox Church to fight the spread of
homosexuality and feminism, which he blames for spurring dissent
against his rule, Mole says.

“His policy is very much like that of the Russian czars:
It’s based on orthodoxy and keeping the Western idea out,” Mole
said.

Putin’s Defense

Putin has defended Russia’s record on gay rights, telling
ABC television in January that it is about protecting children
and has “nothing to do with persecuting individuals for their
nontraditional orientation.”

Homosexuality remains a crime in 70 countries and “some
U.S. states,” Putin said, while in Russia, “everybody is
absolutely equal to anybody else, irrespective of one’s
religion, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation.”

Putin’s popularity rating reached a two-year high in the
last two weeks, which may be attributed to the Olympic games in
Sochi -- where Russian athletes won more medals than any other
nation, Russian pollster VTsIOM said on Feb. 26.

“Russia is where the U.S. or Europe were 50 years ago,”
said Sergey Gavrov, a professor of social science and
anthropology at Moscow State University of Design and
Technology. “Russia is always in the process of catching up
with the West.”

Ugandan Law

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has signed legislation
imposing a 14-year prison sentence for conviction of an initial
homosexual act and the possibility of life imprisonment for
convictions of further homosexual relations.

Evangelical leaders from the U.S., including Scott Lively,
with a Kansas City-based ministry, traveling in Uganda and
addressing lawmakers there have promoted stronger laws against
homosexuality. Yet Lively has issued a statement saying the law
“takes the wrong approach,” and that the “agenda should be on
rehabilitation and prevention, not punishment.”

Homosexuality is illegal in 38 of 54 African nations,
according to Amnesty International.

There is a potential economic price to pay. Uganda’s
shilling weakened for the biggest monthly decline since November
2012. The shilling has slumped 3.3 percent against the dollar
since Museveni signed the anti-gay law on Feb. 24. That’s the
biggest decline among 24 African currencies over the period.

Obama, in a statement issued by the White House, called
Uganda’s law “a serious setback for all those around the world
who share a commitment to freedom, justice and equal rights.”

Loan Delayed

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim delayed a $90 million
loan to Uganda because of the crackdown on homosexuality.

“Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and
for societies,” Kim said in an op-ed article in the Washington
Post. “Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies.
There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that
prevent productive people from fully participating in the
workforce, economies suffer.”

Even in the U.S., the issue is far from settled. The newly
elected Democratic attorney general of Virginia, Mark Herring,
has declined to defend his state’s prohibition on gay marriage,
which a federal judge has deemed unconstitutional. A judge in
Texas this week said the state’s ban on same-sex weddings is
unconstitutional, although he left the prohibition in place in
expectation of an appeal. Judges in Oklahoma and Utah have
issued similar rulings on those states’ laws.

Arizona Veto

In Arizona, the governor this week vetoed a bill passed by
the legislature that would have allowed businesses, based on
their religious beliefs, to deny service to gays.

The business measure was pushed by the Center for Arizona
Policy, a “pro-family” organization declaring that “marriages
and families would be strengthened by public policy, not
attacked or weakened.”

Before making her decision, Governor Jan Brewer had fielded
calls to reject the bill from interests as varied as Delta Air
Lines and Apple, as well as the 2012 Republican presidential
nominee Mitt Romney.

“I have not heard one example in Arizona where a business
owner’s religious liberties have been violated,” Brewer, a
Republican, said at a Feb. 26 news conference in Phoenix
announcing her veto. “The bill is broadly worded and could
result in unintended and negative consequences.”